Plastics helping meet India’s food raw materials needs

Tag : food raw materials
Food crisis world over presents a very grim scenario. Nearer home,things are no better with spiraling prices and inflation at itshighest, having crossed 11 per cent and playing havoc with thealready beleaguered economy. Combating inflation would be adaunting task for the Government. In so far as containing pricesare concerned, one could at least consider causes that are bothtangible and controllable. One only has to look at the way theentire supply chain of food production and its distribution ishandled.

A study by Mckensey estimates that 30-40 per cent of agriculturalproduce in India goes waste. This amounts to a whopping Rs 12,000crore annually! Besides the lack of efficient storage andtransportation system, it is the manner in which food grains aswell as sugar are packed and stored that significantly contributesto such huge losses.
Most of the cereals, pulses, oilseeds, flour and sugar are packedin jute bags which are highly vulnerable to pilferage, damageduring handling and transportation and most of all, deteriorationin quality due to contamination. We use jute bags despite havingfunctionally superior and cost effective medium of packaging namelyplastic woven sacks (PWS).

PWS currently are the preferred choice the world over for foodproduct packaging, with most of the countries using PWS forpackaging of food grains and sugar. It is interesting to note thatall food items coming as aids from the USA and other donors toAfrican and Asian countries are packed in PWS. What